Recent Tasting Notes

Thank you Alphakitty :] Mmm this is a very nice green. The aroma of this tea is extremely juicy. The peach flavor is juicy and very sweet. I can catch a bit of a floral note along with the fruitiness. The flavor is definitely not overdone and fits with the sweet green tea. Overall I liked this one :] Thanks again!

Woah! This is one fruity green tea! With a hint of something savoury as well, which I’m thinking is perhaps the olives?? Who puts olives in tea, anyhow?! Thanks for letting me sample this interesting blend, Azzrian!

Anyways, I suppose it’s not really as fruity as I made it seem, but it certainly doesn’t taste like any other green I’ve had, with this almost smoky, savoury note in addition to sweet fruits. The more I sip, the more prominent the savoury quality is, as the fruitiness kind of takes a backseat. The green tea isn’t overly noticeable in here; a basic sencha, it looks like, and not particularly noteworthy, just present.

I used probably nearly 2 tsp of tea for about 8 oz. of water, and I’m not finding the tea to be weak, so that’s what I’d stick with next time, likely.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not overly fond of most flavoured greens, and although this is certainly interesting, it isn’t a tea I’d pick up myself (but I’d totally want anyone who likes olives to try this one, just for kicks!)

Thanks again Azzrian!

Preparation

I’ve been drinking so many peach teas recently, without even intending to. Part of it is because I got 4 different ones in my happy bag from Lupicia, part of it is weird chance. Like this sample from Azzrian: I was making my cold brews for the day right before bed, and I was so sleepy I kind of just dumped half of this in a cup without paying attention to what flavor it was. Lo and behold, another peach!

I really really need to update my profile here, since it specifically says that I hate peach teas and I don’t anymore! It’s such a good, juicy flavor when done right like it is here. There’s also a nice, soft floral note presumably from the marigold, and also something maybe cirtusy going on in the background? Almost like.. mandarin orange, very faint but it’s there. A tasty fruit blend!

This tea is VERY cinnamony, which I generally like. However, I don’t know if I’m a fan of everything else that is in it. It seems that whatever fruit is “Christmasy” was added. It is by no means unpleasant, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to drink several cups of it.

The clove is quite strong at first, and the orange peel really comes through on the aftertaste. I’ve only had one cup, so I will add more notes once I’ve done more tastings.

Preparation

Azzrian sent this to me a while ago, and I’m just now getting to it. My other Steepsters know how it goes when you just get so inundated with different tea to try ;)

Anyway, I kinda ignore this one for a while, but I’ve been on a green tea kick lately, and I wanted to try something different. And, oh my – this tea is much better than I anticipated. I wasn’t really expecting a whole lot out of this tea, but it’s very very good. I’m getting this really smooth creamy undertone on top of the green tea which makes it perfect. I let the BF try it and he couldn’t believe there wasn’t any sweetener in this.

It’s a really good tea. Just one problem, Azzrian got it from a tea store in Ireland. So it’ll be insane to ship. Maybe I can find a local vendor or a similar tea?

Preparation

This is a nice green base with specs of floral and fruity notes underneath. The fruit notes are a bit like Peach/Apricot type notes which I usually favor so this is right up my alley without being OVER flavored.

I made sure I got a Chili Pepper in there as well as a Mango Chunk or Two!!!
And, of course, various red peppercorns!

WOW! This DOES have a KICK to it! Nothing I can’t handle tho! It’s a welcomed change-up to the other flavors I have drank today! Eventho it’s peppery and barks a little it burns yet soothes the throat a bit! The Green Tea base is on the sweeter side. The pepper, peppercorns, and chili notes take the cake, tho. The mango is in there somewhere, too! It’s also a tad floral!

This is a funky flavored green tea offering and I’m happy I got to try it!

wow what a treat! thank you so much Ashmanra!
This has a great peach flavour, similar to the black peach tea from Tsaa. In fact, they are essentially the same with a different base! If you like green tea and peaches, this is the one for you :)
Personally, I prefer the black tea base but this is lovely for a change!

I have been contemplating drinking this for several, several days. And I have now gotten down to it!

This was alright. I could taste a lot of Papaya, I think was one of the fruits in the list. And that was it, really. Not bad, even tasted a bit peachy but it wasn’t my favorite. So nothing really big to report here.

Preparation

Huge chunks of fruit and plenty of it! I actually scooped so much fruit out of the bag that I had to dump all the tea into a bowl to be sure I didn’t get all of the fruit in one steep – but sure enough the bag was chalk full of fruity pieces!
A nice fruit tea – a bit like Happy Kombucha I was lucky to get to try last night thanks to a swap partner! I think I like Happy Kombucha a bit more but this is a very good fruity tea!
I will use more leaf next time – or less water as I feel the flavors are not quite strong enough for me even with all the fruit. Steep two may bring out more flavor however as the fruit is dehydrated so perhaps needed more soak time. Will note more on second steep.

When I saw there were OLIVES in this tea I was sold.
So this is a lovely light green tea base with a delicate smattering of fruits.
You can in fact taste the olive coming out in almost this peppery note but only so slight and non obtrusive.
The sweetness is very natural and not overpowering whatsoever.
The tea has a sparkling sensation on the tongue and an overall effervescent nature to it.
This tea would be amazing cold but I would highly suggest adding a lot of extra tea because it is a very light tea. If you were to add ice I fear the flavors would be lost. This is NOT to say it is a weak tea however. Its just that it is not trying to pretend to be something it is not and if any flavor additives were used such as artificial I sure am not detecting them.
I admit I have fallen in love with Gurman’s and so far every tea from them I have had the luxury of trying.
I wish the shipping were not such a killer but now that I have tried several of their teas I know it is well worth it when I can make an order with them.
Granted the shipping is more than fair considering they are shipping to the USA from Ireland!
I do think I will go with more tea next time I steep this. I used two teaspoons and recommend for green tea is 2 to 3. I was being stingy trying to conserve but this tea deserves – I deserve (lol) this tea in its best form.
It really is all that!

My order from Gurman’s arrived today! I just want to say considering this came from Ireland the shipping was insanely fast! BOTH of my kids got jobs this week – BEST Mother’s Day EVER!!! In celebration and just in time for it, we shared a steep of this wonderful tea!
The tea is so beautiful with chocolate hearts and pink peppercorns! It smells insanely delicious! It tastes fruity, sparkly, a bit of chocolate flavor with a slight bite from the peppercorn. I love it!

Preparation

They have quite a bit of everything but since I was placing an order from so far away I focused on their speciality teas rather than things I can get from a lot of other places more local. Trust me I could have spent WAY too much on their site lol I tried to keep it under control. My order was right around 50 with 17 of that being shipping.

They source from Germany I think, just like Tin Roof Teas does. The two teas I had were quite good. I do not remember seeing those pretty little pink peppercorns before but they were in my Pepper Mango tea and then I saw them yesterday in Penzy’s Spice Shop, then again in Williams Sonoma. Isn’t that how it goes? :)

I was so excited to try this when I opened the package and smelled it – it smells WONDERFUL… Spicy, sweet and delicious, it makes me think of Thai food! YUM!

This is really good. It’s not REAL spicy, it has some kick to it, but, it’s not a “too-hot” kind of kick, it’s got the right amount of heat to offset the sweeter flavors, to make this a savory tea rather than something that’s sweet, or something that’s spicy. It’s very well balanced.

I am so glad you both liked it! I have emailed the company to ask if they will make it available to us, and have texted my daughter to ask where they got it. She said they actually bought it at a tea shop in Dublin. I am planning to ask if he can pick up some of this and some more Madame Butterfly.

Another Backlog from earlier!
I still very much enjoy this tea blend.
Gurman’s is a fun place to order from.
Something about ordering from another country just makes me feel giddy and somewhat cool haha.
For me, its not TOO peppery at all, it has just the right lift, hardly even a kick to it.
Its sweet (naturally) and savory! LOVE that kind of blend in a tea!

Oh, sorry about that. :D So… Green mango is a different beast. In India, doing things (cooking, juicing, pickling) with young, green mangos is as common as doing things (cooking, juicing, pickling) with ripe mangos. Green mango juice is more tart, and the prepared result includes salt and black salt, making it a savory drink rather than a sweet one. http://amzn.com/B004UKG898

So what I was saying was just that I’m curious, now, what a green mango tea would be like. My guess is that it wouldn’t translate well to a flavoured tea, but hey, y’never know. I hope I didn’t just make it even more confusing… =)

Gurman’s Got back to my email!!! They have added Pepper Mango back into its selections online! WOOTWOOT
Funny – I just recreated it here at home but theirs is better of course.
I am not totally unhappy with my creation HOWEVER I am all over this to order asap!

YIPPIE!!! Bummer is I could have placed my order last night – todays trip to the farmers market has wiped me out until the 2nd. I hope they don’t wonder why I pestered them so much and have not ordered LOL

Ashmanra WOW I am SO happy you sent me this!
I LOVE this and the Madame Butterfly also – going to place an order from this company as soon as I can! I was looking at the site and some of their flavor combinations are out of this world! I am in LOVE with these teas!!!! THANKYOU !!!

A big thank you to Ashmanra for sharing this one. My first Irish tea! I feel like we need a big tea map in the office somwhere, probably next to the door. The wall behind the computers might work, but it would be a pain to get to. Anyway, a map! A big map where we can put pins for all the little areas where we order or drink tea from! I’d say pins for where the tea is grown, but we’d have like what… two pins? China, India, and maybe a purple colored pin in… Ecuador? Is that where maté is from?

Rambling. Tea!

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. I’ll admit it, I do not like mango. I do not like it in a box, I do not like it with a fox. I’ve missed out on a lot of very tasty looking things because one of my favorite flavors in the world, pineapple, seems to be attached at the tropical-fruit-hip to mango in the most inopportune number of ways. I was totally willing to try it in a tea though, especially with spicy stuff!

Missy brewed this a little low, because the tea was a bit dusty, and we didn’t want to fly straight into Bitter-town, which has happened with some green teas. I can smell fruit in the brew, coming from the cup. It doesn’t give me that old-lady-perfume smell that I associate with mango, which is a definite plus!

Now the taste of this was intriguing. Much like the smell, I get none of what I stereo-typically associate with mango. I taste indistinct-grabbing-at-the-back-of-mind-fruit that I can’t identify, but it’s so there. SO there, I just need to identify it. After that, there’s just a tiny bit of pepper aftertaste that burns in your throat after the swallow. The flavor of the green tea seems non-existent. Whether this owes to the tea, the phantom-fruit, or the lowered steep temp, I have no idea.

But the flavor of the phantom-fruit is good, so I keep drinking. The pepper in the second, much larger drink was more apparent, but still nothing (for me) to be too worried about. The third drink, and it finally clicks in my mind… the phantom-fruit is a dead ringer for soaked in syrup fruit cup pear. This flavor is EXACTLY what I want out of a pear flavored tea, now that I’m thinking about it. I never would have suspected that from a mango tea, and I’m now going to suspiciously eye every mango tea I see, and wonder whether it’s really hiding a pear-flavored treasure trove, or a perfume-flavored bomb…

Thanks again Ashmanra! I feel very privileged to have had a chance to drink this!

Tin Roof Teas has an Asian Pear tea that smells really good. I will try to get some next time I am up that way. I only know they use German distributors, as does Gurman’s of Ireland, and that it used to be TeaGeschwender but now they use more than one company. If I can get some, I will send a sample to you and Missy if you want to try it.

It will probably be about two weeks before I can get any….I have to send my son and then he is meeting us for vacation in mid-May! Hopefully he can pick it up and I can send some for you to try. It did smell yummy!

Thank you Ashmanra for your generous sample! We just got this in the mail today so we had to try it out after dinner.

I taste fruit but Dylan and I decided it wasn’t mango but pear. The same pear you get in those tiny fruit cups from the store. I don’t think this pear is that sweet though. It could have some thing to do with not loading the tea pot with as much sugar as I would get in a fruit cup. I get the spice on the actually swallow, while it’s going down my throat I can taste the pepper there and then. Does that make sense at all? I don’t really taste the green tea much but that could be my lack of experience with green teas.

Ashmanra – THANKYOU for sending me some of this tea! And thank you for the generous sample to boot! I have been drinking this all day! Started out with hot tea then made it iced! It reminds me a little of a couple of my other favorites! Its a bit “frenchy” floral and fruity.
Its funny because I have not even touched the sample I had first wanted from you and got this as a surprise sample and have been enjoying it all day long!
On my shopping list! :)